Thursday, 21 April 2016

Google rips off writers

As a professional
writer I want as many people as possible to read my stuff, but (except when I
myself choose to make something freely available) I do expect to be asked, and
even paid, when people want to copy it. Contrary to popular opinion, writers do
not live entirely on fresh air.

I am
therefore a member of the Author’s Licensing and Collecting Society, which
supports writers by, among other things, collecting photocopying fees from
libraries and universities and sending it on to the writers. Once a year I get
a very welcome cheque for somewhere between £50 and £100.

Google, it
seems, does not give a nun’s wimple for the rights of authors, though it is
happy to make large sums of money out of their work. I thought the following
item, from the ALCS’s newsletter, deserved a wider audience, and where better
to put it than on a blog that is run by Google?

ALCS News Bulletin: April 2016

Google wins book
scanning lawsuit

20/04/2016

The US Supreme Court has ruled in
favour of Google in a copyright infringement case filed by The Authors Guild
that has spanned eleven years.

Millions of books were copied by Google without prior permission as part of a
digitisation project that allows small extracts of the works to be viewed
online. This led The Authors Guild in the US to file its lawsuit in 2005.

Following the rejection by the
courts of a proposed settlement and years of subsequent litigation, in October
2015 the appeals court ruled that Google’s activity fell within the ‘Fair Use’
doctrine prescribed by US copyright law. Given that the case involved copying
on a grand scale by a large, commercial organisation, The Authors Guild hoped
that the US Supreme Court would review the ruling. However, in its final
decision yesterday, the Supreme Court resolved not to review the case.

Google has denied any infringement throughout the case, claiming that its digitisation
project fell under ‘fair use’ of protected works and that it served the public
interest. The Authors’ Guild has always expressed its concern that Google did
not seek prior permission of the authors concerned and has long-argued that the
project undermined authors’ ability to make money from their works.

Responding in a statement to the US Supreme Court ruling, The Authors Guild
called the decision a “colossal loss” stating that authors should be paid when
their work is copied for commercial purposes. The Guild vowed to continue to
monitor Google and its library partners to ensure that the fair use terms
acknowledged by the decision are not abused.

Mary Rasenberger, Executive Director of The Authors Guild commented: “The price
of this short-term public benefit may well be the future vitality of American
culture… Authors are already among the most poorly paid workers in America; if
tomorrow’s authors cannot make a living from their work, only the independently
wealthy or the subsidized will be able to pursue a career in writing, and
America’s intellectual and artistic soul will be impoverished.”

Owen Atkinson, Chief Executive of ALCS, commented on the ruling: “The digital
environment provides unprecedented opportunities for accessing published content,
creating new value for distributors and consumers. This is a success story
written by authors and yet they are fading fast from the narrative. A fairer,
more balanced approach is needed, one which recognises that content creators,
such as authors, are the only truly irreplaceable link in the digital value
chain.”